Today thousands of cyclists around the country hit the streets for Bike to Work Day in the United States. In a country dominated by the car, bike transit - as opposed to recreational cycling - is still somewhat of a novelty. Even in large, densely populated cities, you’re more likely to find shared cars than shared bikes. And despite the fact that a car costs 40 times more than a bike, daily fees for renting bikes often exceed those for renting a car. (See WashCycle for a good missive on this.)

But several major cities in Europe have embraced the idea of shared bikes. Shared bikes are low-cost rental bikes parked at stations across the city, optimized for one way trips. For-profit companies like Cyclocity or SmartBike work in conjunction with city planners to help link transportation nodes that are too close for a bus or car, but too far to walk. And unlike shared cars which must be returned to the same parking space, bikes can be returned to any station in the system.

Members provide a refundable deposit (~$200) and pay a nominal annual fee (~$15).  Whenever they need a bike, they simply swipe a card to release an available bike. Rides under 30 minutes are usually free, with increasing fares after that. Most bikes have internal gears and solid tires minimizing muss and fuss - ideal for commuters.

Paris announced this week that it is introducing 20,600 shared bikes at more than 1,400 stations across the city by July 15. The idea has been popular in other European cities, from Lyon to Munich, but with nearly one shared bike for every thousand Parisians, the Bastille Day rollout is nothing less than… revolutionary (see statastic below).

Several US cities including San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago are studying the idea of shared bikes, but it looks like Washington DC will be the first American guinea pig. Early indications are that the DC plan will initially be modest. Like shared cars, shared bike systems greatly benefit from network effects. But now that the planet is heating up, this is no time to be modest. The more shared bikes, the more locations near potential riders, and the users more likely to give it a try, the more profitable, etc.

So can DC match the French passion for shared bike? Not just yet. In order to have the same density of shared bikes in DC as in Paris, Washington would need 5,700 bikes or about 80 Smart Bikes per square mile. And if shared bikes help gets tourists off of those goofy Segways, all the better.

Previously, I hypothesized that widespread adoption of the shared cars would decrease demand for streetside parking (especially with this concept), allowing for more, safer bike lanes. Shared bikes and shared cars could easily work in harmony with one another - there are certainly times when you need a car. But it is time for local leaders to shun the one-car, one-driver paradigm and shared bikes are a great way to start.

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While there have been great expectations for e-books before, it may be e-paper technology that provides a much needed impetus to push e-books into the mainstream. Displaybank forecasts that the flexible display market will grow from $280 million in 2010 to to $12.2 billion in 2017. Not bad, considering that the entire U.S. book market earned $25 billion in 2005. (For Statastic’s full essay about the future of e-ink and e-books, visit here.)

But the market for e-paper and flexible displays extends far beyond e-books. Imagine instantly customizable billboards, or ever-changing e-paper facades that wrap the outside of skyscrapers.

Perhaps the promise of a new advertising medium will finally drive the development of e-paper; e-books sales certainly haven’t. While Sony keeps pitching its rather pedestrian $300 black and white 7″ e-reader, LG Philips taunts us with a 14″ flexible e-paper display featuring more than 4000 colors. Fujitsu and HP are even jumping into the fray with e-reader prototypes. Unfortunately, these new e-readers likely won’t be ready for the consumer market until well into the Gore-Obama administration.
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Chart courtesy of Tech-On based on research from Displaybank.

Tomorrow kite enthusiasts from around the country will converge on the National Mall for the 41st annual Smithsonian Kite Festival. Kite makers can can test their creations in a contest with rules and regulations you would expect in the nation’s capital:

By order of the Federal Aviation Administration, the weight of a kite must not exceed 5 pounds and altitude of flight must not exceed 500 feet. When informed that a Presidential helicopter is approaching, all kites must be pulled down immediately, and not re-flown until the all-clear announcement.

Kites have been a pastime since 3,500 years when they were invented in China. There is also some evidence that Malaysia, Indonesia and South Pacific islands developed kites for a more practical purpose: fishing. This clever technology mashup - still practiced today - enabled them to reach fish in shallows where there boats could not.

But fisherman weren’t the only ones to recognize the utility of kites - so did surfers. Kite surfing, also known as kite boarding, powers surfers through and above the water with a large inflatable kite usually attached to the user by a harness. Although the sport is only 13 years old, there are now more than 200,000 kite surfers around the world.

And if you’re more likely to pilot a large boat rather than a surfboard, you can just attach a Sky Sails to your ship. Cheaper than retrofitting large ships with sails and masts, these enormous kites can help reduce energy costs by taking advantage of ocean surface winds.

While the average five & dime kite is lucky to use all 500 feet of its discount cotton string, more serious kite enthusiasts upped the ante a few years ago. They started with a kite 30 feet in width, tethered it to a 3 inch thick Kevlar line and flew it to a record-setting height of 13,500 feet - more than two and a half miles in the atmosphere.

But recent research into using kites as a renewable energy source would shatter that world record.

Environmentalists were quick to hail wind turbines as a viable alternative to our reliance on fossil fuels, but bird lovers hated them. It seems that Don Quixote’s giants were swatting down some of their favorite feathered friends. So why not build the windmills farther from the ground?

Indeed there are several companies considering this. Treehugger reported that a Canadian company called Magenn has invented a wind-powered generator that is a cross between a kite and a helium balloon. Held aloft by helium 1000 feet in the air, winds cause the Magnus effect where “rotation increases, lift increases, drag will be minimized because of reduced leaning, and stability increases.” Electricity generated by these floating turbines is then sent to the ground via an electrical line.

Another idea takes windmills and attaches kites. The Italian company Kite Wind Generator uses kites 1000 meters in the troposhere that “are anchored to a revolving structure on a vertical axis, analogous to a giant merry-go-round, which conveys the energy… (to a) power-plant.”

And if kites pulling a merry-go-round isn’t innovative enough, imagine if Thomas Edison invented a kite today. Recent research proposed that flying electric generators (FEGs) could harness kinetic energy in jet stream winds. These winds more than six miles above the surface of the earth produce up to 100 times more energy than winds on the ground. According to the Washington Post, “just tapping into 1 percent of the energy in high altitude winds would be enough to power all of civilization.”

Of course, if none of these other kite-based solutions solve U.S. energy problems, President Bush can just go fly his What Would Jesus Do? kite.

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Washington D.C. Public Library Case Study

Washington DC’s 37% rate of functional adult illiteracy reflects one of the most underfunded and underutilized library systems in the country. In 2004, former DC Mayor Anthony Williams launched a task force in 2004 to examine the DC Public Library (DCPL). In November 2006 the Mayor’s Task Force Report was released, envisioning that:

“Revitalized libraries will offer fresh collections of current books and media, useful standard publications, multilingual materials, GED and SAT practice books, historic documents and records, pertinent online databases, and digital content.”

Unfortunately, listing digital content last is symbolic of the vision for DC libraries. In the 370 page Technical Report, e-books are mentioned only seven times in reference to the future of DCPL collections. Here some of the few excerpts that lay out technology vision for the DCPL in 2010 and beyond:

“[Page 21]: The library should license digital content and make it available to registered borrowers whether they are in the library or using the collection from their home. E-books, digital audiobooks, videos-on-demand, and other digital content should be available for downloading to a customer’s personal computer, PDA,or MP3 player. …

[Page 60]: A ‘virtual branch’ is fast becoming a necessary facility for successful public libraries serving large populations. … A virtual branch can be a full-service location for searching licensed electronic databases, getting answers through an interactive reference service, downloading digital books and audiovisual content, using learning software, and participating in online programs such as presentations and discussions about books and topics of current interest. Also, items in the library’s physical collections can be reserved and, when available, shipped to the user – with any fees charged to the user’s account or credit card.”

It all sounds pretty high tech until you hit on idea of shipping books around the city. In any case, if you’ve lived in DC for long, the vision of a virtual branch probably sounds like science fiction. In fact, the 2010 vision for the DCPL is based on technology that has been used in public libraries around the country for years.
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Playing Catch Up

Several companies including NetLibrary, Overdrive, and Ebrary already have partnerships with public libraries around the world. All three offer a system for libraries to purchase e-books and popular audio book titles, though the technology is not cheap. NetLibrary has a rather shocking price structure. According to LibraryJournal.com:

“NetLibrary… now with more than 100,000 titles, has maintained its one book–one user access model. The company offers two primary purchase models based on title-by-title selection: libraries can subscribe to an ebook by paying the list price of the book, plus an annual access fee of 15 percent of the list price, or libraries can ‘own’ an ebook by paying the list price plus a one-time access fee of 55 percent of the list price.”

Unfortunately, the lack of a significant discount for subscriptions will encourage libraries to purchase e-books. If the library purchases a title, e-catalogs lose many of the advantages of digitization. For example, if econo-star Steven Levitt is heading to Seattle to talk about Freakonomics and 100 people want to read his e-book at the same time, they’ll have to wait. The King County Library System can only lend out 5 of his e-books at a time. E-books are made of 1s an 0s, not hardwoods and glue, so why not simply pay the publisher every time the virtual book is checked out?

Although the NetLibrary subscription model is extortionary, subscription e-books are the ideal model for libraries. E-books require few human resources: three weeks after you check out an e-book, it is automatically “returns” itself to the library by deleting itself (spooky, eh?). A subscription service ensures that libraries pay publishers only when e-books are checked out, so no dollars are wasted on lonely, unread books sitting on dusty shelves. Best of all, 10 of your best friends can check out a copy of the e-book at the same time, eliminating excuses in your book club.

While a subscription service might seem to favor the publishers of bestsellers, it also provides increased exposure to authors of obscure or out-of print books - the so-called long tail. If libraries pay only when e-books are loaned, then there is no reason to limit the size of their virtual catalog. A proper e-book subscription service that costs a public library no upfront fees also reduces guesswork in collections management, enabling a smooth transition in budgeting for a dedicated e-library.
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Leapfrog: DC Should Pursue the First True Virtual Public Library System

DC Public Libraries suffer from several problems that make them an ideal test case for launching a real virtual library: huge deferred maintenance costs, an aging central library, and a population disillusioned by years of neglect to local libraries.

DCPL is too far behind the technology curve to play catch up. Instead they should leapfrog technologies. Statastic proposes that new DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and DCPL Director Ginnie Cooper consider a bold experiment in virtual collections.

The DCPL should start phasing out the acquisition of new paper books in 2008, with the goal of e-books making up no less than 90% of new acquisitions 2013. By 2017, the DCPL should have digitized 90% of its existing collection and sold the millions of hardback books in its stacks to help generate revenue. This will reduce required square footage - and overhead costs - of neighborhood libraries, eliminate the frustration of missing books, and create more space for the computer terminals that are sorely lacking.

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Advantages to the DC Virtual Library

One of the most obvious advantages to a virtual library is the 24-hour access to books that might otherwise be checked out or unavailable. It could also expand the size of the DCPL available collection from 2.7 million volumes to as many as 32 million - every title in the WorldCat system. More titles mean more attention from residents, which increases reading and circulation.

In a city with 17% of its residents and 30% of its children living in poverty, it might seem that DC is not well-suited for e-books. After all, how would someone living in poverty afford a $300 e-reader? And how would they download a book with access to the Internet? Statastic expects the prices of e-readers featuring e-ink to drop to less than $75 within 5 years (we already have $100 laptops), and less than $40 by 2017.

Under this plan, the DCPL would phase in heavily subsidized or free e-readers for every low income DC resident. Children could also use these e-readers in the public schools where textbooks are in such short supply making it impossible to assign homework from textbooks. And assigning a hot new technology like e-readers to under-privileged citizens might just spark their interest in reading.

With the advent of Google Books, do we need a virtual public library? Many DC residents with their own e-readers and home Internet access will soon have access to millions of Google e-books. But the digital divide is real and if public libraries aren’t centrally involved in digitization of books, the gap will widen. As the high-income, early adopters turn toward e-books, wealthy taxpayers might see less value in funding the DC Public Library System (if this is even possible). This would exacerbate already grave funding shortfalls, leaving an underclass with an ignored and outmoded library system.

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E-book Public Library Budget

Free e-readers, millions of e-books… sounds expensive, doesn’t it? Actually it could save taxpayers millions of dollars. The DCPL proposed budget for 2007 is $43 million, of which $19 million is for reference and library collection services. Facilities make up another $9.4 million. All three of these categories will have enormous savings if transitioned to an e-books catalog:

• 1. Book Sale: Bound books would be liquidated, with proceeds dedicated to digitizing rare books and subscription to an e-books catalog.
• 2. Deferred Maintenance: Neighborhood libraries that have been already been closed or that suffer from huge deferred maintenance costs would be sold and replaced by an increased number of smaller, leaner e-libraries that offer better neighborhood access to computer workstations, distribution of e-reader and training and reading programs. Neighborhoods with little Internet access would be served by DCPL e-book kiosks (more on this below).
• 3. Staff reductions: With fewer books to re-shelve and a 24 hour virtual library online, collections and maintenance staff could be reduced. As D.C. Library Renaissance Project Director Robin Diener recently commented: “We have evidence of incredible abuses — people who work for [the library] and draw a salary and rarely come to work. It’s a no-work culture.”
• 4. Private Partners: The DCPL should pursue technology partners such as Google or Yahoo which will be naturally be drawn to the cutting edge, high-profile project of digitizing the library system of the nation’s capital.
• 5. Private & Public Grants: The DCPL’s innovative virtual library experiment will also attract attention from major donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as federal grants.

By 2017 when the DC Virtual Library System is in place, there will be some new expenses (2007 dollars):

• 1. New Staff: Tech savvy staff capable of managing a virtual catalog and training patrons on the use of e-books, e-readers, and online catalogs. The new, more expensive staff hired will be offset by staff reductions due to reduced maintenance and collections services (e.g. re-shelving). Reference librarians will still be necessary, though they may take on new roles dispensing valuable advice through online forums. It’s even easy to imagine 24 hour access to an online librarian.
• 2. Subsidized E-readers: Assume that students would be issued e-readers at school. The DCPL would purchase e-readers for any adult with a household income of less than $35,000 per year. Nearly one-third, or about 184,000, DC residents would qualify for free e-readers. If new e-readers are issued every 2 years and the price of e-readers averages $40 in 2017 (it is more likely to be about $15 to $20), it would cost the city about $3.7 million annually to supply free e-readers. Other ways to help defray these costs are to require a deposit or small co-payments from those above the poverty line.
• 3. E-book Subscriptions: Circulation in all DC public libraries is about 1.1 million books. If the DCPL can reach a circulation rate similar to Seattle’s, residents would be checking out 6 million e-books per year, or about 1 book per month for every reading-age citizen. If the DCPL cut a deal with publishers to pay $2 for every book checked out from its libraries, it would cost the DCPL $12 million per year to maintain its e-book collection.
• 4. E-book Kiosks: For residents in neighborhoods with limited home Internet access, DCPL could provide e-book kiosks near public areas like schools or community centers. Pre-distributed e-readers would have RFID technology that identifies the DCPL account. The customer would simply touch the e-reader to kisok to log in. After selecting a title, the user holds the e-reader next to the kiosk for a free wireless download of the e-book. Installation and maintenance could be covered by corporate advertising on the outside of the kiosk.

The total new expenses of subsidized e-readers plus e-book subscriptions is equal to about $15.6 million. Compare this to the $19 million being spent on collections and references this year alone.

It’s important to remember that not all books, documents and historical will be digitized, so there will be still be a need for a central library, whether it is the renovated Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in downtown DC or the new one proposed by the DC Mayor. Either of the central library proposals are would cost about $275 million according to city estimates. Statastic doesn’t prefer one proposal over another, but it is imperative to rethink the needs of a central library with e-books as the heart of the collection.

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Unknowns and Opportunities

There are two unknowns in creating the world’s first truly digital library: 1) are publishers willing to negotiate lower e-books subscription rates, and 2) will the DCPL create its own e-book collection or outsource it?

One major pre-condition for this proposal to succeed is that subscription e-book prices must be negotiated downward. Publishers and authors must be made to understand that low-priced e-book “rentals” in public libraries will increase readership. Publishers will sell higher volumes of e-books, and they can count on a reliable revenue stream.

It is not cost effective for the DCPL to digitize its collection from scratch. Google has already inserted themselves into the e-book value chain and Google is far and away the leader in the number of titles digitized. In fact, Google may be the only corporate partner for creating a virtual public library. According to Jeffrey Toobin in this week’s New Yorker, because of publishers’ lawsuits against Google, they might be the last company to digitize the world’s books:

Google’s advantage may well be cemented if the company settles its lawsuits with the publishers and authors. … [Lawrence Lessig , Professor at Stanford Law School said], “The publishers will get more than the law entitles them to, because Google needs to get this case behind it. And the settlement will create a huge barrier for any new entrants in this field.”

Google will complete digitization of the 6 million books at the University of Michigan by 2010 - the same target year for the DCPL’s modernization. The DCPL should approach Google immediately to negotiate a partnership for the DC Virtual Library.

Are DC residents feeling lucky?

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Yesterday we left several unanswered questions: who should digitize the world’s books? How do we ensure that authors get paid? What is the future of libraries in the digital age?

U.S. libraries have the potential to lead the digital book revolution. Libraries have a large market, consistent funding sources, and good relationships with private partners. Unfortunately, a lack of funding, a lack of focus, and usual bureaucratic hurdles have given Google the lead. Google certainly isn’t evil, but their market power does reduce the likelihood that public libraries will ever gain the political traction needed to fund this vision.

Before we start assessing the future of e-books and public libraries, let’s set the framework for how authors should get paid and who has the power to provide a digital library for the world.

The E-Book Market

It might be instructive to take a brief look at how Google has inserted itself into the e-book market. There are five major players in delivering e-books to readers:

1. 1. Authors: The vast majority of authors are crucial but in many ways peripheral to the development of e-books. That may change (as it has in journalism) but in the near future, their power is distributed too widely.
2. 2. Publishers: Publishers select authors, preen their works and prepare them for public consumption. Resembling the intransigence of record labels in the music industry, publishers are effectively dragging their feet on e-books by not offering any type of discount that would realistically lure readers away from paper books. Publishers fear that the sharing of e-books and emergence of virtual publishing will cut them out of the value chain.
3. 3. Google: Google has used its deep pockets to rapidly insert itself into the e-books value chain. Google already reaches out directly to authors, so it’s easy to imagine that publishers may lose power and influence.
4. 4. Libraries: Libraries are a widely distributed market and reliable customer, purchasing millions of books every year for their collections. The role of libraries in the digital world is rapidly changing. They may lag behind and slowly adapt to e-books, but taking initiative sooner could them more control over the e-books market than any other player.
5. 5. Bookstores: Bookstores - online and off - have lagged on developing a viable e-book model. E-book sellers are often small web companies with specialized catalogs (see statastic! below). Your corner bookstores should be shaking in their bricks and mortar when it comes to e-books, and finding an e-book at Amazon.com is a confounding experience.

Copyright Issues

Now that we know the players, let’s look at one sticky issue that may be delaying the widespread adoption of e-books. Copyright is fundamentally a commercial problem, not a legal one. Intellectual property protection enables authors and musicians to derive profit from their works. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is absolutely critical to protecting the rights of authors. While many of us are familiar with the shortcomings of DRM in music, it is much better suited to e-books - with some adjustments:

• -Customers who purchase e-books must be given a discount. Of the $20 you pay for a new hardback book, up to half is allocated to shipping, printing, publishing, and marketing costs. When you eliminate those costs by selling it in electronic format, you can charge less (say $12) while increasing publisher and author profits.
• -Customers who purchase e-books should have the right to re-sell those books. Although Apple is having no trouble selling DRM music that cannot be re-sold, music downloads are fundamentally different: music is designed for repetition. Just try reading an e-book as many times as your little sister listens to the latest Justin Timberlake CD.
• -E-books must be sold in sections. Just like being able to buy an MP3 single rather than the full album, e-books must give customers the option to part of a book - especially in non-fiction. For a few cents, customers should be able to buy a single recipe (rather than the cookbook), or city museum guide (rather than the entire country guide).
• -E-books must be rent-able (a.k.a. subscription model or DRM time bombs). This is especially critical for the success of electronic public libraries.

If low-priced e-books are protected by reliable DRM and rent-able for public libraries, copyright protection should cease to be an issue. Why? Because people will have almost no incentive to share e-books and e-libraries would create a reliable profit center for publishers and authors.

The Wal-Mart Library?

Now that we have the commercial fundamentals of our new e-book world established, let’s take a look at how this would impact the players.

Wal-Mart flipped the supplier-buyer relationship upside-down. Because of Wal-Mart’s size and market share, suppliers are hesitant to be dropped from Wal-Mart shelves. This gives Wal-Mart increased power to negotiate supplier prices down (often to a fault). Suppliers make less profit per item, but they bet on making it up on volume.

When Google enters the e-book market, it will do so as the market leader (see statastic! below). This may have been Google’s strategy all along: the network effect. For example, where would you go to auction an item? If you want the most eyes on your item, you will auction it at Ebay where there are the most items for sale. Google’s huge database of digitized books will provide a similar draw for readers, giving Google buyer power over suppliers - in this case publishers. With the promise of massive volumes of e-books being sold on Google Books, Google should be able to negotiate lower e-book prices with publishers.

If libraries across the country were to unite and pool their resources, they could also create a single digital library. The federal government could also negotiate lower e-book prices for its public libraries, just as Congress is considering using the market power of 300 million citizens to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for its Medicare beneficiaries.

There are several advantages to a publicly-funded initiative to digitize the world’s books. Google Books search is proprietary. In other words, if you use Yahoo as your search engine, no Google Book results will show up. In contrast, a U.S. Digital Library would be searchable by anyone. Tomorrow we will explore how a such a nationalized virtual library might be implemented in the Washington DC Public Library system.
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In the near future, most of our media will be found on a hard drive. 35mm film is rapidly going extinct, CDs are giving way to MP3s. Filmmakers like David Lynch have announced that they will never use anything but digital video cameras. Meanwhile, Netflix has introduced movie downloads. And whether the execs are ready or not, television is being revolutionized by YouTube among others. But our most ancient media of all hasn’t budged: books. Sure we read and write on computers for school and for work, but at the end of the day when you curl up with a good book, it’s unlikely to be on your laptop. Why hasn’t the e-book taken off? And what happens when it does?

Books are long overdue (ahem) for the digital revolution. For the rest of the week, statastic! will consider the future of e-ink, e-paper, and e-books. What are the implications for our public libraries? Stay tuned for a case study on the e-library of the not-so-distant future. But first things first: You can’t have an e-book without e-ink.

In the 1970s, the legendary Xerox PARC first developed something they called electronic ink, or e-ink. E-ink is comprised of millions of microcapsules the diameter of a human hair. Each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a minimal electrical charge is applied, the microcapsules flip and remain flipped until the next electrical impulse tells them otherwise.

E-ink is perhaps best explained by what it is not. It is not an LCD or a plasma display that you may be accustomed to seeing on a laptop computer. Unlike laptop displays, e-ink is not backlit, meaning that if you want to read in bed, you’d better have a light on. The fact that e-ink doesn’t rely on backlighting results in several advantages:

• -Easier to read: E-ink has nearly the same resolution and reflectivity as printed text. Reading using reflected light is much easier on the eyes than backlit screens, and much easier to read in sunlight. Unlike plasma or LCD flat screens, you can view e-ink from several angles just like regular paper.
• -Flexible e-paper: Because e-ink doesn’t require backlighting, it also doesn’t require a rigid glass screen. The simplicity of e-ink means that it can be paired with flexible materials creating an e-paper that can be bent, or even rolled up.
• -No need to recharge: Once the electrical current tells the microcapsules whether to turn black or white, they remain in that state indefinitely with no power input. A page using e-ink (also called e-paper) can remain open indefinitely without drawing down of a battery source. You can read thirty books before you need to plug in an e-reader using e-ink.

Currently several companies are pursuing e-ink and e-paper. Plastic Logic, the developer of the “E Ink,” announced on January 3rd, 2007 that it had completed a $100 million round of equity financing. Their research currently is focused on flexible displays that will enable an electronic reader to hold hundreds of e-books and weigh less than a thin newspaper. For video on the flexible display prototypes, click here.

Several companies have already licensed E Ink for their own devices. Sony’s $300 e-reader holds 80 books, weighs about as much as a paperback and can turn 7,500 pages before it needs a charge. Star eBook just released its 6.2 ounce e-reader in Japan, claiming that it’s the lightest reader on the market. And late in 2006, Hitachi released a 4,000 color e-reader, an innovation that could rapidly earn some converts.

If the $300 to $500 price tag seems unrealistic, consider this: In 1996 DVD players hit the American market for about $600 (in 1996 dollars, no less). The least expensive DVD player at Walmart.com is now $30, less than 5% of the price a decade ago. If e-readers have similar adoption rates, you might be able to pick up an e-reader for less than the price of a hard cover within a few years.

Tomorrow: the e-book market

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The Russian Futurists - imagine the Magnetic Fields playing with a full electronic symphony underwater. Try to pick out the honking geese on the track “Our Pen’s Out of Ink.” A relative inconvenience in this age of e-ink.

Sources: Statastic research, Wikipedia, e-paper.org,

In online music news, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing the Russian website allofmp3.com for the comical sum of $1.65 trillion, more than double Russia’s nominal GDP of $763 billion. To be sure, allofmp3 is skating on thin legal ice by using loopholes in lax Russian copyright laws to sell MP3s discounted as much as 90% from iTunes pricing. But if it weren’t so legally ambiguous, who would complain about song downloads for as little as a dime?

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune of happening upon a Tower records in the process of liquidating its CDs for half price. The place was mobbed. It seems that while people no longer can stomach paying $19 for a CD, the $9.50 price point was much more tolerable. This is not as much a lesson in bricks and mortar versus online music, the lesson is that people buy more music when the music is less expensive.

iTunes has noticed that the $10 price point is significant to customers. But it’s still too high. After all, they’ve compressed a higher quality digital format, cut out shipping costs and eliminated printing of CD booklets. It’s possible to buy CDs online for a similar price, the only trouble is that you’ll have to wait for several days to receive it.

A couple of years ago during an NPR round table about digital rights management (DRM), someone suggested a groundbreaking approach. Why not put every song ever recorded online and let users download them for a nickel each? When allofmp3 started that’s basically what they did. At that price, there’s no reason not to be impulsive. Five cent downloads would reduce incentives for file sharing and encourage listeners to experiment with new music.

A nickel per song doesn’t sound like much revenue for artists, but artists would drastically increase sales volume. If artists picked up 60% of the revenues, or 3 cents per song, then selling an albums with a total of 15 songs would only earn them $.45. If 10 million people downloaded the album they would earn $4.5 million on album sales alone. And what if the artists benefited from the mashups and amateur remixes that now proliferate on the web? Artists could offer up song pieces for sale and then split revenues with bedroom DJs.

As hard drive prices decline, the cost of storing music approaches zero. And if the price of acquiring the music approaches zero, then people have no reason not to buy it. Imagine the innovative companies that might spring up: online DJs who choose playlists from your own MP3 collection. Or, while listening to online radio you could simply push the repeat button for a song you like. The service would charge you a nickel, download the song instantly to your hard drive. Better yet, store your music library of thousands of songs online and stream it wherever you go.

This will never appeal to the RIAA lawyers who make their living by imagineering $1.65 trillion lawsuits. But it would benefit the artists and the public. And artists that no longer make their living attempting to sell overpriced albums can always sell overpriced tickets to sold out concerts (there’s evidence that this is already happening), incentivizing bands to play live more often.

Statastico would love a copy of TV on the Radio’s critically acclaimed “Return to Cookie Mountain.” The single Wolf Like Me is fantastic, as is their live show and nearly everything they’ve produced thus far. So how does someone like me get music? At about $.27 per track emusic.com is the best value out there.  If emusic doesn’t carry the album (and they don’t), then I buy the CD and endure the long wait. There are many other options, so I decided to evaluate them compared to my dream website anysongonearthforanickel.com.

Statastico compiled an entirely biased and unscientific assessment of the methods most people might use to acquire music. There are two scores, the price score and the usability score. Price score was taken as the inverse of the price as a percentage of $11.50. In other words, if it’s free it scored 100 and if it is close to $11.50 it scored near 0. The usability score is based out of 100 and is the average of the scores from the following 6 categories:

1. 1. Legality: Sharing songs with friends, file sharing and allofmp3.com scored 1 and 10 in this category; all others scored 100.
2. 2. Ease of Use: File sharing is time consuming and risky, while amazon.com and iTunes are straightforward. Emusic was marked down to 75 because they require a subscription.
3. 3. Music Selection: How many albums can you find? Predictably, our theoretical “any song on earth for a nickel” came out on top.
4. 4. Flexibility: Can users share the music easily with other, are there digital rights management, can you re-download MP3s that you may have lost (as on emusic)? CDs scored slightly higher because they allow users to select their own music compression, allowing flexibility for more advanced compression formats in the future.
5. 5. Audio Quality: CD format was given 100, AAC was rated higher than MP3s because of better quality at lower bitrates, and file sharing was marked down to 50 out of 100 because of inconsistent downloads.
6. 6. Instant Gratification: How long it takes to get the music? Physical transfers involving UPS scored low, online transfers (except file sharing) scored higher.

As you can see, the fictional website anysongonearthforanickel.com wins. Of the next four best options only allofmp3 would (allegedly) pay royalties to TV on the Radio (emusic doesn’t carry the latest album).

The RIAA should remember that customers - especially young customers - are extremely price sensitive and tech savvy. The RIAA will never shut down peer-to-peer networks, (in fact allpeers just developed an add-on for Firefox). The RIAA must embrace innovation rather than outmoded business models. By shifting the paradigm to low-cost song downloads, artists may once again get paid for their hard work.

For full source data click here.

Statastico tries to provide a diverse look at world around us. I’ve written about butter cows, decapitation, planets the size of countries, even measured wieners. The result of this eclecticism is that some odd, disturbing (and anonymous) google searches have led people to my web site over the past month.

Some folks have pretty normal requests. Most web searches that end up on statastic.com are searching for one of three things: 1) nursing wage information, 2) video games, or 3) critiques of the Bottom of the Pyramid. These folks I can help.

Then there are the others…

Someone in Vancouver wants to know “how many breaths a human takes in a week?” All statastic can tell you is how much hot air from a politician it takes to fill up a balloon, but the good people of Vancouver are asking the right questions.

A Los Angelean wants to know the “definition of Joshua”. No idea, but have a look at joshuakucera.net, maybe he can tell you when he’s not worrying about The Rise of the Neo-Con Artists.

A Canuck wants to know about “cannibalism in Islam”. I’ll go ahead and field this one. Cannibalism is indeed a fundamental precept of the Muslim religion. And you are right to be worried: Most Muslims prefer the tender, maple-syrupy taste of Canadians. Now you understand why Bush is so concerned about Islamic Cannibal Extremism.

But maybe it’s the Romanians we should be focused on. Apparently someone in the San Francisco Bay Area is wondering about cannibalism in Romania. Hopefully, they were looking for this old Romanian folktale: The Cannibal Innkeeper.

Someone in Norcorss, Georgia (I’ll a assume an optimistic young man) did a google search on “super models AND alcohol”. Finally someone thinking straight. After reading my entry on how to drink the most alcohol per calorie, he now knows that supermodels prefer Keystone Light.

“Swiss cow subsidies” were on the mind of someone in Zurich, Switzerland. You know, I’ll bet Swiss cows are nearly perfect. They stand on two legs at the top of the hour when it’s time to be milked, and put the toilet seat down after using the cow-let. Well worth the EU subsidies, I’m sure.

Over in Utrecht, Netherlands, someone was wondering about Agassi and death. He’s alive and well, it was the death of American (men’s) tennis that had Statastico worried before Roddick’s encouraging run at the U.S. Open.

Finally, someone in Tucson, Arizona was thinking about “breast terror”. Dear god. Why anyone looking up breast terror on the Internet would click on a site called statastic! is beyond me, but a recent search shows that statastic.com still comes up third on the google search for the terms.

Perhaps the Arizonian was looking for a justification for getting breast implants during our Global War on Terror:

Shrapnel from rocket lodged in implants, sparing Israeli woman

August 15, 2006: JERUSALEM - An Israeli woman’s breast implants saved her life when she was wounded in a Hezbollah rocket attack during Israel’s war with the Lebanese group, a hospital spokesman said Tuesday.

Doctors found shrapnel embedded in the silicone implants, just inches from the 24-year-old’s heart.

It’s a weird world wide web.

Car-sharing is gaining popularity in cities across the United States. The idea is simple: car-share companies or cooperatives park hundreds of cars in convenient locations that any member can rent by the hour. Most car-share programs cost about $8 to $12 per hour, including gas, insurance and maintenance.

On the face of it, car-sharing is a economical and eco-friendly way to get around. Zipcar has about 40 members sharing each car in their national fleet. That’s certainly better than 1 car per person, right? Perhaps. If your goal is to reduce the total area dedicated to parking a vehicle, it does indeed free up valuable urban space. If, however, your goal is to reduce traffic congestion, smog, or reliance on fossil fuels, the jury’s still out.

Car Sharing Increases Mobility - and Traffic - Amongst Urbanites

Car-sharing is most appealing to urbanites who choose to live in densely-populated cities in part to avoid car ownership. Zipcar and Flexcar have both built a business model on enhancing the mobility of these groups. The consequence of increased mobility, unfortunately, is that more urbanites are driving alone. According to a study sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, 26% of users reported driving more as a result of car sharing.

Flexcar and Zipcar are for-profit companies, and each has recently received $20 million in investments. Those investors expect profit, and that profit will be generated largely by getting more people to drive more of their cars. Most privately-owned cars spend 95% of their time parked. Shared cars have much higher usage rate - most users are unlikely to pay $10 per hour to just to park their car somewhere (which is why commuters who drive to work are unlikely customers for car-sharing). In short, car-share companies generate revenue when people drive those cute little Zipcars around town. (Sorry, but the Flexcars are significantly less attractive. It looks like their marketing department went out for a drive and had a fender-bender with their new logo).

Like public transportation, the economics of car-sharing only make sense with high urban density. In fact, car-sharing is a substitute for other transportation options, many of which are better for the environment. When asked what people would do if a shared car were not available, nearly half of respondents said that they would have taken public transportation or not made the trip at all. It appears that half the time shared cars are used, they have the potential to increase traffic.

This is balanced by another effect of car-sharing: People are more aware of how much they drive. If a user factors in the cost of a Flexcar for a quick trip to the grocery store, the price of a gallon of milk could soar from $3 to more than $10. And that suits the car-sharing business model. Flexcar and Zipcar need high usage rates to remain profitable. But forty members sharing a single car means that each week, a member can only reserve a car for an average of 4 hours. If a member wants a car during premium hours after work or on the weekend, car-share members had better plan ahead: members have an average of about 1 premium hour per week.

Getting Suburbanites Out of Private Vehicles and Into Shared Cars

Although urban car-share members may drive more, suburban users help account for the 46% of drivers who reported that they drove less after they started using car-sharing. Although the FTA report concluded that, “many studies show no statistically significant change (in vehicle miles traveled),” car sharing helps fill a mobility gap created by insufficient public transit in the car-centric suburbs. Suburban two-car households can significantly reduce their expenses by switching to one car plus what Zipcar calls a “fractional second car.” And this may help reduce vehicle miles driven (VMT). Arlington, a northern Virginia suburb of DC, reported that the average car-share member reduced their VMT by 43% between 2005 and 2006.

For now, shared cars are focused on the more densely populated areas with populations that are inherently less reliant on car culture. Flexcar and Zipcar have about 75% of their total fleet in the District of Columbia despite the fact our 515,000 residents make up only 10% of the total DC metro population. Even in close-in suburbs like Arlington, 83% of the 3,500 car share members live in the densely populated Metrorail corridor.

Car Sharing Eases Parking Pressure

Densely populated areas stand to gain the most from car-sharing for a reason that may not be immediately obvious: parking pressure. Despite what urban dwellers may believe, even un-metered street parking is not free. Street parking is public land where private citizens are allowed to store their vehicles. Any taxpayer without a car is effectively subsidizing vehicle owners. All parking spaces have an opportunity cost. That is, there is the opportunity to use that space for something else that is forfeited when we park our cars on the street.

Convenient parking also reinforces America’s car culture. Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example, devotes more land to parking than to all other land uses in the city combined. According to Donald Shoup, the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, 15% of parking spaces must be open at all times or people will be dissuaded from driving. Car share minimizes this problem for neighborhood street parking because its parking spaces are permanently reserved. This means less time, and less traffic, caused by people driving around looking for a spot near home.

How Shared Cars Can Create Bike Lanes

Eliminating the need for free street parking is indeed a worthy goal. Anyone experienced with urban biking has had nightmares about a driver’s door whipping open in front of them. Bike lanes alleviate some risk by granting a wider berth to cars parked curbside, but according to WashCycle, U.S. cities often build bike lanes too close to parked cars. Michael King at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill advocates at least 14′ from the curb to the edge of the bike lane, but this guideline is ignored by many U.S. cities. This may explain why many cyclists refer to bike lanes as “suicide lanes.”

So what would happen if U.S. cities accepted shared car culture as the norm? Statastic used a Northeast Capitol Hill neighborhood as an informal case study to find out. Assuming that the neighborhood has the same average density as the rest of DC, there are about 4,000 people living in an area about 6 long and 11 blocks wide.

Now for the assumptions. According to census data, about 18% of DC residents drive by themselves to work. We’ll let them keep their cars. Another 28% are car owners who either carpool or don’t drive to work. We’ve decided that one-third of them will be converted to car sharing and will give up their cars. The remaining 32% of DC residents over age 18 don’t have a car, so let’s assume that 100% of them become car share members. The result is that 1,600 of 4,000 residents in this neighborhood are now full-time car share members.

Using the Zipcar ratio of 40 members per car, the neighborhood will need an additional 33 shared cars, bringing the total to 40. Zipcar claims that each shared car replaces 15 to 20 private vehicles, and that means more available street parking. Those 40 shared cars in northeast DC could replace 800 private cars, freeing up twelve miles of street parking. Eliminating street parking on one side of a 44′ wide road would also liberate about 16% of the pavement. Wider bike lanes could be added, existing traffic lanes could be widened, and wider lane for street parking would eliminate risk of getting doored while biking by.

The best part is that by increasing the density of shared cars, there would likely be a tipping point where it would become increasingly popular. As people convert to shared cars, the distance between the average resident and a shared car shrinks. Another way to look at it is that with a high conversion rate, the number of cars within three blocks of any resident would increase from 2 to 15. That means more cars to choose from: hybrids for quick city trips, trucks for hauling, or a convertible Mini for a weekend away.

How could we get to this tipping point? Taxing the free parking along city streets would be a start. To give an idea of how valuable the land is that DC residents park their cars on, consider that the going rate for a private parking spot is about $200 in the Dupont area of DC. Taxing street parking could be done in conjunction with proportionally lowered property taxes to avoid political backlash from homeowners. Although cities won’t necessarily generate more income from street parking taxes, residents would understand the real cost of parking and could make a rational economic decision about car ownership.

Shared cars and biking everywhere. Does the car-free life sound like a pain? It’s easy to get used to - Statastico does it every day.

People are passionate about their online groceries. And they are very passionate about milk, specifically Tuscan Whole Milk sold at amazon.com. Reading these 700+ reviews of a gallon by teens and tweens from around the world did make Statastico feel a bit old. (And uninformed.)

But it does raise an issue: how much of the time we spend blogging, reviewing products and updating Wikipedia while at work? How does this affect worker productivity? Wikipedia arguably increases efficiency. Buying the product you want on the first try because of user feedback helps consumers and producers alike.

If I had more time, I’d try to correlate the average number of product reviews on Amazon to the unemployment rate. Alas, Statastico is going to the U.S. Open to watch Agassi beat Baghdatis tonight. Any volunteers Statasticos out there, or have you all gorged yourselves on a gallon of milk during the past hour?